by Lia Nigro
Freelance Writer based in Columbia, Maryland
“Sweetpea, are you having fun?,” Robin Holliday calls to a visitor exploring Horsespirit Arts Gallery’s diverse collections. Holliday curates (to date) 46 very individual artists, all hailing from within a 30-mile radius of her two-level Savage Mill space. Abstract oil paintings, steampunk metal sculpture, enamel and gemstone jewelry, silk scarves, fused glass, hand-turned wood, three-dimensional fabric wall art, and much more draw the eye from display to display.
Born and raised in rural North Carolina, Holliday retains a touch of flirtatious Southern charm along with a natural talent for blending business with hospitality. Her warm, make-yourself-at-home demeanor doesn’t hint at her background in nuclear engineering or acknowledge the stress she’s been under the past few years keeping her almost-six-year-old business moving forward despite disaster.
Saying Goodbye to Ellicott City
With Horsespirit opening in Savage only in November 2018 after being forced out of Ellicott City by two destructive floods, Holliday is already organizing a broad spectrum of public classes and workshops along with free monthly opening and closing exhibit receptions. She’s also begun to lobby the Howard County Arts Council to hold a “Paint Out” similar to Ellicott City’s popular”Paint IT!” event. “I would love to have our gallery host a paint out,” Holliday says. “Artists could come paint historic Savage, and then come here where the show would be jurored,”
Holliday recalls wanting to be an artist and run an art gallery from the age of 11, influenced by her grandfather’s wife, Mable Covington Holliday, not a grandmother by blood but closer than most blood grandmothers. “My mother got pregnant when she was 18 and in college,” Holliday explains. “My parents both went to college during the week and came home on the weekend, so, essentially during my first four years my grandmother raised me.”
She fondly remembers art projects completed together once the table was cleared at night but she also was impressed by her grandmother’s involvement teaching local women. Coming to rural North Carolina with a fondness for oil painting and making collages, Covington Holliday set up a ceramics shop in the back of the farm, and that was the start. “She taught them to oil paint, she taught them to paint on ceramics obviously, and there was a quilting guild,” remembers Holliday. “One of her gifts to the community was providing a creative outlet for these women who had nothing else but being a mother, being a wife, working on the farm–and all of that was work–so this was a place that was theirs.”
From Nuclear Engineering to Arts Gallery
Whatever Holliday’s vocational dreams, starting off as an artist or art gallery owner was not part of the real life plan. “My parents…they were both the first kids in their families to go to college, and they were just sure their kids were going to college and would be self-sufficient. Being an artist, being a gallery owner was off the table.”
“And also at that time,” Holliday adds, “I had something to prove. I went to North Carolina State University and I picked the most difficult major they had. They had nuclear engineering and they had chemical engineering. Both were hard. I picked nuclear.”
She successfully earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees but upon graduation she realized she did not want to work in the field. While she was studying, the Three-Mile Island accident happened and it had altered her feelings. The only woman in her class and a rarity in North Carolina (“the North Carolina of 30 years ago”), she also did not feel she was being “taken seriously”. She moved to Maryland and took a job with a not-for-profit supporting the U.S. Navy with national security issues, “and I was taken seriously there.”
“So the nuclear engineering degree just taught me to do analysis,” concludes Holliday, “and I ended up doing analysis for 26 years.”
Life-Changing Events
Two events shocked her out of her comfortable routine. One was a simple milestone, her 50th birthday. The second, bigger influence was a health crisis, with her husband, Max Crownover (who also has a background combining engineering and art), suddenly struck down by an autoimmune disease, its symptoms appearing in a single day. “It was very, very serious. He was on disability from his job for six months. At one point it was so serious he couldn’t go to the hospital in fear of infection,” Holliday remembers. “We really weren’t sure–we weren’t sure he was going to make it.”
Crownover has made a full recovery but “it was life changing for both of us…a decision point.” The realization, says Holliday, was that “you get one shot. Everything can be taken away from you, so if you want to do something you better do it now.” They made changes that cut the couple’s income in half, with Holliday quitting her job entirely. She began focused on her own art in 2009 and opened the first location of Horsespirit with nine other artists in 2013.
The Howard County Adventure — Ellicott City Flooding
That first location outside Glenelg in Western Howard County was rather isolated so the next move, to Old Ellicott City, was an exciting step forward. Holliday was not fully aware of the flood dangers until, nine months later, the first hit. “I was present when it happened,” says Holliday. “Certain people can have different reactions, they can run or they can fight–well, I am definitely going to stay and fight.”
” I had all those artists I was representing, I had all their artwork downstairs so–I held the door. And I held the door standing there, pushing the water back for….what felt like 30 minutes…and I was watching cars float down the street. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I wasn’t thinking clearly at all.”
“Finally the doorframe broke in, the glass broke,” Holliday continues. “The water was at my chest at that point so I crawled up on the furniture, held on to the 12-foot ceiling, and made my way back to the staircase. There were three people there screaming bloody murder for me to get upstairs. Finally I went upstairs and looked out the window and I could see the magnitude of what was happening.”
The first floor of the gallery was destroyed, with eight feet of water leaving six inches of mud and hazardous conditions due to broken sewage, gas, and water lines. Holliday and one of the other people helping her ended up in the emergency room at one point as they worked on cleaning up, but they rebuilt. Holliday is grateful for the help of the artists she had displayed in the efforts, saying “Without them I wouldn’t be here today.”
After that Holliday began reading up on the conditions in Old Ellicott City from local rain patterns and climate change to Howard County land development issues. A month before the second flood she was talking with her husband about moving. A week before, when a storm was predicted, they moved all the first-floor art up to the third floor. When nothing happened they moved it back. The next weekend, the flood hit. Damage was even worse than the first time, with the ceiling collapsing and first and second floors damaged. That night Holliday knew she was moving. “It was just too frightening,” she says. “And I understand community spirit, and I miss everyone in Ellicott City, but….”
The Road to Savage Mill
“We looked at about 100 places,” before choosing Savage Mill, reports Holliday. “It has the same historic feel as Ellicott City, and was at a price point we could afford. And the more we learn–it seems to have a nice community around it.” She comments how expensive Howard County is as a whole, with rents a challenge for “little tiny businesses like mine.”
The gallery had most recently been a bicycle shop. “It used to be fire engine red, lime green, and dark grey,” remembers Holliday, “bike racing colors.” There’s still a “bike shower” in the back.
In what were fairly extensive renovation efforts, Holliday had a goal of creating a space that would allow visitors to “find it a sanctuary. You think about everything going on in the world, the national situation, everything, and I want you to come in here and get a break. And when you leave here I would love it if you feel better than when you come in.”
A Great Community of Local Artists
Holliday speaks of her gallery and artists as “dating long-term” and has the goal of creating a mix that’s “uplifting and eclectic” (she usually follows artists in their chosen direction but remembers parting ways with one artist away after he began photographing prisons and insane asylums, presenting her with a “beautifully executed” image of an electric chair). Quality is a must and a number of the artists are nationally recognized, such as Deborah Maklowski (president of the Colored Pencil Society of America) and Ed and Brenda Kidara (steampunk metal sculpture and oil/watercolor/acrylic respectively),
“I pick artists based on if I think they are talented. But I also pick them based on if they are kind,” says Holliday. This is my second career and nice matters, kind matters, integrity matters. So I really choose it on their character. Because one of the things I had wanted was to form a community of artists in the gallery that was mutually supportive of one another. ”
The rule limiting the gallery to artists within 30 miles also contributes to allowing a community to be maintained. Artists have begun collaborating with one another, for example some of the fused glass is in metal frames one of the metal sculptors made, and those working with fabric scraps or found objects regularly receive donations from other Horsespirit exhibitors.
Robin herself is not currently exhibiting. “I do jewelry and crystal sun catchers,” she says. “Before the first Ellicott City flood I had a lot. After the first flood I had sun catchers. After this one I’ve just been focused on getting reestablished. I have no art out at all.”
Getting established in a new location is challenging. “The people here are lovely [but] we do not have the foot traffic that we had in Ellicott City so I’m spending all my time, energy, effort, money, etc. on getting the gallery known. Because you have to make a concerted effort to come here and so I have to be known that I’m here and I try to keep the art quality high…displayed in a way that when you walk in the door you’ll want to come back.”
Robin is optimistic, if realistic. Asked for her advice for would-be entrepreneurs, she speaks straight to them: “hold on, you can do this, it’s going to be a bumpy ride, but you got this….hold on cause you can do it, it just takes some time.”
Robin Holliday is the owner and curator of Horsespirit Arts Gallery. The gallery will hold their next free art show opening reception on free opening receptions on Sunday, July 21 and Sunday, August 18, 1-4 p.m. (see website for details and future events). They also have art classes upcoming in areas including oil painting, mixed media mosaic, pen and ink with watercolor, introduction to colored pencil materials and techniques, introduction to black-and-white ink wash painting, and introduction to experimental watermedia techniques. See the gallery’s Eventbrite page for details.